Laura S. Brown

Bio: Laura S. Brown is an academic researcher from Argosy University, Seattle. The author has contributed to research in topics: Feminist therapy & Countertransference. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 13 publications receiving 469 citations.

Motivated Forgetting and Misremembering: Perspectives from Betrayal Trauma Theory

Abstract: Individuals are sometimes exposed to information that may endanger their well-being. In such cases, forgetting or misremembering may be adaptive. Childhood abuse perpetrated by a caregiver is an example. Betrayal trauma theory (BTT) proposes that the way in which events are processed and remembered will be related to the degree to which a negative event represents a betrayal by a trusted, needed other. Full awareness of such abuse may only increase the victim’s risk by motivating withdrawal or confrontation with the perpetrator, thus risking a relationship vital to the victim’s survival. In such situations, minimizing awareness of the betrayal trauma may be adaptive. BTT has implications for the larger memory and trauma field, particularly with regard to forgetting and misremembering events. This chapter reviews conceptual and empirical issues central to the literature on memory for trauma and BTT as well as identifies future research directions derived from BTT.

Still subversive after all these years: the relevance of feminist therapy in the age of evidence‐based practice

Abstract: In this article, based on my Carolyn Wood Sherif Memorial Award Address, I address questions of the viability of feminist practice in the current Zeitgeist. Using the framework of responding to questions raised by doctoral students about feminist therapy, I address how feminist practice aligns with the evidence-based practice movement, particularly those aspects focusing on empirically supported therapy relationships. I propose that feminist diagnostic strategies enhance cultural competence for therapists, thus better preparing practitioners for the clients of the twenty-first century. Finally, I discuss the question of who is a feminist therapist, addressing issues of gender that have long challenged the universality of feminist therapy's applications.

Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory

Abstract: This article describes the construction of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI), and 5 studies that examined its psychometric properties. Factor analysis indicated 11 distinct factors: Winning, Emotional Control, Risk-Taking, Violence, Dominance, Playboy, Self-Reliance, Primacy of Work, Power Over Women, Disdain for Homosexuals, and Pursuit of Status. Results from Studies 2-5 indicated that the CMNI had strong internal consistency estimates and good differential validity comparing men with women and groups of men on health-related questions; all of the CMNI subscales were significantly and positively related to other masculinity-related measures, with several subscales being related significantly and positively to psychological distress, social dominance, aggression, and the desire to be more muscular, and significantly and negatively to attitudes toward psychological help seeking and social desirability; and CMNI scores had high test-retest estimates for a 2-3 week period.

Summarizing 25 Years of Research on Men's Gender Role Conflict Using the Gender Role Conflict Scale New Research Paradigms and Clinical Implications

Abstract: This article reviews 232 empirical studies that used the Gender Role Conflict Scale (GRCS) over the past 25 years (1982-2007). The article introduces the gender role conflict (GRC) construct using past definitions and theoretical models. The research findings for diverse men are summarized and studies related to men's intrapersonal, interpersonal, and therapeutic lives are analyzed. The empirical support, criticism, and challenges to the gender role conflict research program are reviewed. A contextual research paradigm with seven domains is presented and 18 research questions and two research models are discussed to foster more moderation and mediation studies on men's GRC. A new diagnostic schema to assess men's GRC in therapy and during psychoeducational interventions is discussed. The research review concludes that GRC is significantly related to men's psychological and interpersonal problems and therefore an important construct for psychologists and other helping professionals.

Complex trauma, complex reactions: Assessment and treatment.

Abstract: Complex trauma occurs repeatedly and escalates over its duration. In families, it is exemplified by domestic violence and child abuse and in other situations by war, prisoner of war or refugee status, and human trafficking. Complex trauma also refers to situations such as acute/chronic illness that requires intensive medical intervention or a single traumatic event that is calamitous. Complex trauma generates complex reactions, in addition to those currently included in the DSM‐IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This article examines the criteria contained in the diagnostic conceptualization of complex PTSD (CPTSD). It reviews newly available assessment tools and outlines a sequenced treatment based on accumulated clinical observation and emerging empirical substantiation. Complex trauma refers to a type of trauma that occurs repeatedly and cumulatively, usually over a period of time and within specific relationships and contexts. The term came into being over the past decade as researchers found that some forms of trauma were much more pervasive and complicated than others (Herman, 1992a, 1992b). The prototype trauma for this change in understanding was child abuse. The expanded understanding now extends to all forms of domestic violence and attachment trauma occurring in the context of family and other intimate relationships. These forms of intimate/domestic abuse often occur over extended time periods during which the victim is entrapped and conditioned in a variety of ways. In the case of child abuse, the victim is psychologically and physically immature—his or her development is often seriously compromised by repetitive abuse and inadequate response at the hands of family members or others on whom he or she relies for safety and protection. The expanded understanding also extends to other types of catastrophic, deleterious, and entrapping traumatization occurring in childhood and/or adulthood, for example, ongoing armed conflict and combat, POW status, and the displacement of populations through ethnic cleansing, refugee status, and relocation and through human trafficking and prostitution. It might also result from situations of acute and chronic illness that require ongoing and intensive (and often painful) medical intervention or may even result from a single catastrophic trauma, for example, witnessing the sudden traumatic death of another individual or experiencing a brutal gang rape.

Sex and personality

Abstract: THE purpose of this work, which the authors regard as a pioneer attempt, is the accomplishment in the field of masculinity and femininity of something similar to Binet's early achievement in the field of intelligence, inasmuch as they have endeavoured to apply psychometric methods in the form of a test to the study of sex temperaments. The test was originally devised by the senior author, Lewis M. Terman, in 1922 in the investigation of intellectually superior children, and has since been applied in the examination of a great variety of groups, including college students, office workers, athletes, delinquents, homosexuals and prostitutes, the ages ranging from early adolescence to extreme old age.Sex and Personality': Studies in Masculinity and Femininity. By Lewis M. Terman and Catherine Cox Miles., assisted by Jack W. Dunlap, Harold K. Edgerton, E. Lowell Kelly, Albert D. Kurtz, E. Alice McAnulty, Quinn McNemar, Maud A. Merrill, Floyd L. Ruch, Horace G. Wyatt. (McGraw-Hill Publications in Psychology.) Pp. xii + 600. (New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1936.) 25s.

Culturally adapted psychotherapy and the legitimacy of myth: a direct-comparison meta-analysis.

Abstract: Psychotherapy is a culturally encapsulated healing practice that is created from and dedicated to specific cultural contexts (Frank & Frank, 1993; Wampold, 2007; Wrenn, 1962). Consequently, conventional psychotherapy is a practice most suitable for dominant cultural groups within North America and Western Europe but may be culturally incongruent with the values and worldviews of ethnic and racial minority groups (e.g., D. W. Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992). Culturally adapted psychotherapy has been reported in a previous meta-analysis as more effective for ethnic and racial minorities than a set of heterogeneous control conditions (Griner & Smith, 2006), but the relative efficacy of culturally adapted psychotherapy versus unadapted, bona fide psychotherapy remains unestablished. Furthermore, one particular form of adaptation involving the explanation of illness-known in an anthropological context as the illness myth of universal healing practices (Frank & Frank, 1993)-may be responsible for the differences in outcomes between adapted and unadapted treatments for ethnic and racial minority clients. The present multilevel-model, direct-comparison meta-analysis of published and unpublished studies confirms that culturally adapted psychotherapy is more effective than unadapted, bona fide psychotherapy by d = 0.32 for primary measures of psychological functioning. Adaptation of the illness myth was the sole moderator of superior outcomes via culturally adapted psychotherapy (d = 0.21). Implications of myth adaptation in culturally adapted psychotherapy for future research, training, and practice are discussed.